


Paradise Is What You Make It

by Ramasi



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramasi/pseuds/Ramasi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bae is what keeps her trapped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradise Is What You Make It

**Author's Note:**

> Based on episodes up to 2x04 (The Crocodile).

Sometimes she looks at this child and hates him.

She kneels on the floor in front of the hearth, washing his face with warm, wet cloth, her white dress blackening under her knees, her hands trembling with gentleness; he stands still, patient, his small body terrifying with fragility. She stands for hours by the fire, turning and turning a minuscule piece of meat, watching his dark mop of hair appear and vanish behind the table, he's playing quietly with some twine figures Rumplestiltskin brought for him; the smoke, imprisoned in the small cottage, is filling her eyes, her mouth.

She starts awake at night at a sudden, sleeping sob from his side of the room, and the vision swims before her eyes: her son's body broken, stricken down, a wild animal, a snake, she was away on some duty or other, absent, guiltless, free, she cries over the pale, already cooling body, and the image of his dead eyes is so real that she has to choke back real tears. Guilt is like lead in her stomach, and some mornings she wakes up struggling for breathe and staggers out of bed as if poisoned.

She rushes outside then and inhales cold morning air so hurriedly that it burns her throat; but the wide, endless free space around her only makes it worse.

Drinking helps. Company helps; men, sometimes, but her husband's harrowed face haunts her, and it is never what she hopes. Drawing helps, so that all the surplus they have is spent on her supplies, and she draws mountains and islands, faces, roads fading on the horizon, and she tells herself that perhaps this is better, imagination and control, that she doesn't truly need – 

Blaming Rumplestiltskin helps, loud enough to turn the hate and contempt she is met with to pity, and if some might disapprove of her behaviour, they also understand. She feels vicious pleasure at every unkind word he overhears or hears reported; because complaining to _him_ is useless. Fighting with Rumplestiltskin is like fighting thin air, he cows and yields at every turn, his whole being engulfed in fright and helplessness.

_I'm sorry, Milah._

She cannot see his face as he sits by his spinning, his back to her, but she can hear the repressed tremor in his voice and imagine the pathetic turn of his lips. Even now, the movement of his hands is steady, and she can barely remember now that there was a time when she admired the understated grace of it.

_I wish you could be happier._

The reproach in his voice is too thin almost to notice. There's still something hammering against her skull as she lies on the bed, she drank too much last night, and when she woke up to Rumplestiltskin's sad, patient face above her in the morning she wanted to scratch it off. It's not the first time: she's dreamt of hitting him more than once, but she can see him covering before her, _fleeing_ , and she cannot _bear_ –

_I wish there was something I could do._

She gasps for air. His hand is sure and gentle on the wheel.

_But we have a son_. There's that choking feeling again, and claws in her breast; she tells herself those are the after-effects of the drink. Bealfire is outside, playing with other children. He's growing fast, and when she carries him now, he feels heavy as stones in her arms. _We have to think of him first._

She turns her back to him and closes her eyes on the room as if that could make it vanish, and murmurs words of an old prayer. He's right: whatever is between them, whatever their failures and her desires, there is the child, and that child needs her. Nothing she will do or say or wish will change that.

Behind her, Rumple's hunched shoulders straighten just a little. The wheel creaks faintly as it turns.


End file.
